Gail Slater, the assistant attorney general who turned the Justice Department's Antitrust Division into a weapon against Big Tech monopolies, stepped down from her post on Thursday.
Her departure closes a consequential chapter. In just under a year, Slater convinced a federal judge in Virginia that Google monopolized the ad tech market — a landmark ruling that sent tremors through Silicon Valley. As Breitbart reported, she also submitted a statement of interest in an antitrust case alleging that big tech and big media organizations colluded to censor an organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a brief statement of thanks:
"On behalf of the Department of Justice, we thank Gail Slater for her service to the Antitrust Division which works to protect consumers, promote affordability, and expand economic opportunity."
Slater herself posted a farewell on X that was gracious but unmistakably wistful:
"It is with great sadness and abiding hope that I leave my role as AAG for Antitrust today. It was indeed the honor of a lifetime to serve in this role. Huge thanks to all who supported me this past year, most especially the men and women of @justiceatr."
The phrase "America First" gets bolted onto a lot of policy labels. In Slater's case, it wasn't branding — it was a governing philosophy with teeth.
The Senate confirmed her last March with bipartisan support, and she arrived with a clear thesis: antitrust enforcement isn't a progressive project. It's a conservative one. The left spent the last decade pretending to care about monopoly power while letting Silicon Valley write its own rules. Slater argued the right had a deeper claim to the tradition — and she traced it all the way back to the founding.
"Let us not forget that the Boston Tea Party was a protest not only against the British government's taxation without representation, but also against the monopoly granted to the British East India Company."
That line, from one of her speeches during her tenure, captures something the libertarian wing of the party has been slow to internalize. Free markets aren't free when a handful of corporations rig them. Slater understood this instinctively, and she framed it in language that resonated with the base:
"America First Antitrust empowers America's forgotten men and women to shape their own economic destinies in the free market. We will stand for America's forgotten consumers. We will stand for America's forgotten workers. And we will stand for the small businesses and innovators, from Little Tech, to manufacturing, to family farms, that were forgotten by our economic policies for too long."
Forgotten consumers. Forgotten workers. Family farms. This was antitrust enforcement pitched not at the Brookings Institution crowd but at the people who actually feel the squeeze when three companies control the digital marketplace.
Slater's signature achievement was the Google ad tech case. The Justice Department secured a ruling that Google had monopolized the advertising technology market — a victory that validated years of complaints from publishers, small businesses, and anyone who's watched Google extract rent from every corner of the internet.
The record wasn't unblemished. A follow-up case seeking to break up Google's search business fell short; the judge wasn't persuaded. But winning the ad tech ruling alone represented a shift. For years, antitrust enforcement against tech giants amounted to sternly worded letters and settlements that functioned as parking tickets. Slater moved the needle.
She also waded into politically charged territory with the Kennedy censorship case, filing a statement of interest in a lawsuit alleging that big tech and big media conspired to suppress an organization Kennedy founded. That kind of filing signals DOJ's view that the case raises issues of national importance. It was a shot across the bow of the censorship-industrial complex.
Slater's tenure wasn't without friction. She clashed at times with senior officials who favored more lenient oversight of mergers — a tension that reflects a broader fault line within the administration between those with populist instincts on corporate power and those more inclined to let deals proceed.
That divide isn't new, and it won't disappear with Slater's exit. It's the central economic debate on the right: Does conservatism mean defending corporate freedom categorically, or does it mean ensuring that markets remain competitive so ordinary Americans aren't crushed by consolidated power? Slater knew where she stood. She invoked Senator John Sherman — the Ohio Republican who authored the Sherman Antitrust Act — as a model:
"Finally, America First Antitrust continues the legacy of the Ohio Republican Senator John Sherman, the namesake of the Sherman Act, a true economic populist who never went to college, was a self-taught engineer, and became a lawyer under the apprenticeship of his brother."
A self-taught populist who built the legal framework for breaking up monopolies. Slater clearly saw herself in that tradition.
The question now is whether Slater's departure creates a vacuum or a transition. No successor has been announced. The Antitrust Division doesn't run on autopilot — it runs on the philosophy of whoever sits at the top. A more corporate-friendly replacement could quietly shelve the confrontational posture Slater brought. A like-minded successor could build on the Google wins and push further.
The stakes are straightforward. Big Tech spent the last two decades accumulating power that rivals governments. Slater demonstrated that a conservative DOJ could fight that consolidation without borrowing from the left's playbook — rooting enforcement in founding principles, free-market competition, and the rights of ordinary Americans to participate in an economy that isn't rigged against them.
She did it in a year. The next person in the chair will determine whether it was a chapter or a footnote.
